


There is No Memory of Them Here

by athousandwinds



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alcoholism, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 13:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Learning to live for others is only the first step to learning to live for yourself," said Aurelius in one of the books Haymitch had made a point of never reading.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is No Memory of Them Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalisgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalisgirl/gifts).



> Title paraphrased from a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay.

Haymitch spent most of the day on his back, trying to think of them all.

Not his fault. Forty-six names were a lot, to begin with, and then there were the ones from his own year: Ecklie Whatsit, Something Cole, and Maysilee Donner, who he'd spoken to three times in his whole life before the Reaping, and thought of every day since. He'd believed once, in his early, white-hot rage, that he'd never forget any of them, not their names nor their faces, the way they walked, or, more memorably, the way they ran. Now, when he succeeded in recalling one of them to mind – Amilee Macready, who'd been short for her age and, as it turned out, curably optimistic – he tipped up the bottle again, and blotted it out.

"You're not even trying," said Peeta, thumping down into the solitary armchair.

"I'm always trying," Haymitch said. Katniss was prowling along the enormous bay window, but when she heard him speak, she turned her head for a fleeting moment.

"Peeta will write for you," she said.

Haymitch had guessed that. Katniss sometimes still couldn't hold a pen properly, when the wind blew in off the mountains and her fingers cramped up like an arthritic old hag, so that most of their morbid little scrapbook of obituaries had actually been written down by Peeta. Except, and he knew this without being told, Prim's.

"I'm drunk, not decrepit," he said. "I can write it myself."

"Yes, but will you?" Peeta asked, at the same time as Katniss said, "I don't see the difference, with you."

"You think you're the cute one," he said to her. "You're wrong."

"I don't think that," she said, her brow creasing slightly.

"Yes, but will you?" Peeta repeated, louder.

"Fuck you," he said. Katniss came to rest behind the back of the armchair, like Peeta's bodyguard. Peeta, impervious to insults but still hanging on to her, looked up with uncertain eyes. Was that what all her palaver been about, back then, who needed her protection more? Peeta had one of those faces. That was good, right? That'd been Aurelius's first step, the reason beyond all others that he'd been optimistic about her recovery.

"Stop it," she said. "You'll do it or I'll – "

She broke off, and stared past him at the wall. Remembering something, probably, or her mind was doing the remembering without her; in the chair, Peeta stayed silent and still, watching her face.

"I'll do it tomorrow," Haymitch said to him.

"Thank you," Peeta said, but he didn't turn his head.

Haymitch saluted Katniss with the bottle, then drank off the dregs. Tomorrow wouldn't ever be a problem for him, the way he was going.

* * *

He woke up in the early hours of the morning, which was what always happened after he'd drunk too much white spirit. He rolled out of bed, not hugely wanting for a drink, which meant that he was still at least half-blitzed.

He wandered out through the kitchen door and into what passed for a backyard, although it was so overgrown that he couldn't go far in bare feet. Katniss was awake, too, her eyes wide and bright with manic exhaustion. She'd come outside with the kitchen knife, to slash away at Peeta's flower garden.

"I didn't sleep," she said, hacking away at the primrose bush. It looked vaguely controlled, so Haymitch only watched her and didn't try and help. "Did you sleep?"

"Yeah," he said.

Katniss yanked at a half-severed twig; it came away in her fist. She glared down at the bush, as if it had betrayed her by being so weak. "Did you dream?"

"Don't remember," he said.

"I dream all the time," she said.

"I don't care," he said, but she ignored him, which was only fair, because he hadn't meant it.

"I dream about mutts, and Finnick, and bombs, and mutts, and – " she hesitated, stumbling over the _P_ , "prisons, and fire, and mutts again."

Haymitch shrugged.

"I hate mutts," she said.

_Listen to her,_ Aurelius had said before handing over custody to him. _Let her know she's not the only one going through all this._

"Yeah, me, too," he said.

Katniss let the bush alone, not because she'd finished but because the knife had blunted. She stabbed it into the ground, not looking at it.

"I woke up and I couldn't get back to sleep again," she said.

"It happens," said Haymitch. "On bad days."

* * *

When he went back inside, he sat down at what had supposed to have been used as a desk. In fact, it had become storage space for anything he didn't want to think about: a blue paper bird, a discarded bag for a flapjack, an unused form for tesserae. The paper bird had been made for him out of a napkin, by – a girl, whose name began with J, at least ten years in, but less than twenty – who'd thought that if he liked her, he might get her more sponsors.

He had liked her, Haymitch remembered. But he'd done for her the same as for all of them, wandering round all the usual suspects and hearing, _Darling, it's sweet that you're trying_ and _Oh, god, not you again_ and _No, I'd rather spend it on something useful_ , which had, in the event, been a trident, which meant it must have been the 65th Games.

Jinny, that had been the name. He wrote it down.

The flapjack hadn't been given to him by a tribute. There were no traces of it left; even the crumbs had rotted away, but the wrapper had been folded twice and shoved in the middle drawer. He left it where it was.

The tesserae form – 

– had been a mistake.

By them, not him. It had been delivered about four years ago, when they made the switch from just handing them out in schools. Too many kids lost the form on the way home, Haymitch had supposed; not Seam kids, but those like the Undersees or the Donners. He thought – he was pretty sure – that the form had been supposed to go to the other Abernathys, who were cousins of some kind that he'd barely spoken to even before he was Reaped.

Sometimes, in paranoid moments, when he hadn't had a drink in too long, he knew it had been deliberate, that it was a reminder. _We can do it again._

What Katniss didn't get yet, and maybe never would now (wasn't that the reason why he'd done everything?), was that you didn't ever forget, that only stupid people forgot, and you never stopped looking over your shoulder, and you never, ever stopped waiting for the kick in the teeth.

But you couldn't live like that.

Haymitch needed a drink.

* * *

The fourteenth tribute he remembered was Simun Moss. 

Simun Moss hadn't been his actual fourteenth tribute, whose name still slipped his memory, but his twenty-second. He'd been a boy of seventeen, nearly ineligible – by about three weeks, nearly ineligible – but he'd climbed up onto the dais with a look on his face that was almost exalted.

" _That's_ what we like to see!" said Effie, who'd been all primped up for her first outing. She'd been relieved at how calm he was; the girl that year had cried from the moment her name was called to the moment she stepped off her platform half a second early. "A round of applause for this brave boy!"

She'd got it, that year, a half-hearted smattering of clapped hands, and Haymitch had, not for the first time, hated everyone in the crowd, all those people who were thinking _Not me, not this year_.

But it was the look on Simun's face that had made him wince. He'd looked relieved, too.

Haymitch had understood it at the time, pretty much. He'd thought that it was the same kind of sick relief that had come when he saw his mother's slack mouth, his father's limp hand: _well, now it's over. I can stop worrying now_. It was what happened later, in the arena, which bothered him.

At the Cornucopia, Simun had started slowly, hesitating to leave his platform, and one of the Careers had tackled him to the ground, a machete already in her hand. She'd raised it, point-down, to stab him through the neck and Simun had reared. The blood had almost been a surprise; hers, not his. He'd twisted her arm behind her back until her nerveless fingers released the knife and then she'd got it through her kidneys. And _then_ Simun had run, pelting across the plain for the far-off mountain.

He'd not made it fifty feet before the girl's district partner was onto him – with a bow and arrow, even, and he hadn't bothered shooting, a single arrow clenched in his fist, driven through Simun's neck. But what had stuck with Haymitch was the look of surprise on Simun's face. Not at the moment of death – tributes were always, _always_ surprised then, except Peeta, who only ever seemed surprised to find himself alive each morning – but before that, when the Career girl attacked. He'd looked almost shocked to discover how much he wanted to live.

He'd looked happy, the moment before he died.

Haymitch watched Katniss's face, every day, for that look.

* * *

"I can't do it," he said, dropping the leaf of paper onto their kitchen table.

"Why not?" Katniss demanded, like a hawk suspicious of why her worms were gone. He'd asked her why she cared so much and, after a few rounds of mutiny, she'd said, _Because Peeta does_ , which was true, but not all the truth, or even most of it. He'd let it go. _Learning to live for others is the first step to learning to live for yourself_ , said one of Aurelius's fucking books, which he'd unloaded signed copies of onto Haymitch, and which Haymitch hadn't bothered to read, or at least not past the first chapter.

"I need someone to write for me," he said. It hadn't been any good, going round and round by himself. He'd written nothing but their names.

"I _told_ you Peeta would do it," Katniss said, her eyes narrowing. It was going to be a nasty argument again.

"That's why I came here, sweetheart," he said. He thought Katniss would lash forward, like an angry cat, but instead she merely looked at him, and it seemed like she was reading some coded message in his expression.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess. Me, too."

There was a long silence, while Haymitch wondered if she knew what he meant, and decided, with some pride, that she did.

"Well, I made dinner for three, if you want any," said Peeta.

Haymitch could barely stomach the idea of keeping something down, but he said, "All right," and let Peeta serve him a plate of the stew he took off the stove.

Peeta found inconsequential things to talk about as they ate, like he'd stored them up during the day just for this. He burbled on about the medicine factory they were building, and the playground where the school used to be – and here his gaze turned wistful, and Katniss looked down – not to mention the things Emly had said in the market. Then he stopped, just as abruptly as he'd begun, and said:

"Do you remember the names of the tributes you were in the Games with, now?"

"Ecklie Gray," Haymitch said, twitching the sheet of paper towards him. "Fadden Cole. And Maysilee Donner."

Every night during their alliance, they'd lain next to each other, not touching, their sleeves lightly covering their mouths so that they didn't breathe in poison during the night. She'd whispered, "Do you think we'll ever be able to be like this with anyone else?"

Not any more, he'd thought, not ever again. He'd said, "I don't know."

"I'm sorry," she'd said. "They're probably filming this, too. Your girlfriend – "

"It's all right," he'd said. He hadn't been thinking of his girlfriend. He hadn't been thinking of anything outside the arena, because it had seemed to encompass the world that night, huge and suffocating, pressing down on his chest.

Suddenly, she'd touched his elbow. He'd flinched, but she was already pulling away, oddly shy. The warmth of it lingered.

"It's got to end sometime," she'd said. He'd said it to her that morning, meaning the arena, and not the Games.

"Yeah," he'd said.

"What about the others?" said Peeta now, breaking the silence that had grown up around them. Katniss was sitting awkwardly on her chair, her knee drawn up to her chest; watching him. She was waiting for something, he thought, but what Haymitch didn't know.

"I remember all of them," he said.

It wasn't even mostly a lie.


End file.
